print about this (encouraging the successful districts and appealing to the unsuccessful ones). Very little time remains, and the newspaper must take on all this work itself.

It is necessary to obtain from the city administration through acquainted statisticians (or officially from the editorial board and members of the State Duma) all statistical materials (if they do not exist, buy copies of *Rech'* for those years and months or another newspaper) concerning the elections to the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd State Duma + statistics on Petersburg (housing, population, etc.). With such materials in hand and with a capable reporter who visits the city administration daily or 2-3 times a week, it is possible to set up a newspaper section on the progress of the elections well.

Are you sending *Pravda* to Vienna to the Wiener *Arbeiter-Zeitung*?84 Do send it, and send us a parcel of it as well.

I advise Trotsky to be answered in the mail section: "To Trotsky (Vienna). We shall not respond to querulous and libelous letters." Trotsky's vile campaign against *Pravda* is nothing but lies and slander. The well-known Marxist and Plekhanovite Rothstein (London) wrote to us that he received slander from Trotsky and answered him: I can accuse the Petersburg *Pravda* of nothing. But this slanderer and liquidator lies left and right.

Ready to be of service, V. Ulyanov

P.S. It would be even better to answer Trotsky in the mail section thus: "To Trotsky (Vienna).

You labor in vain sending querulous and libelous letters. There will be no reply"85.

Written July 19, 1912

Sent from Kraków to Petersburg

First published in 1933

in Lenin Miscellany XXV

Reproduced from the manuscript